October 19, 2013

Caption in NYT 4/4/13:
"'When communism fell,' a Roma man told the photographers,
"You had to be dumb not to make money."

If you have good reading comprehension, an urge to read closely, and a strong memory, the The New York Times is an outstanding source of information. Unfortunately, those prerequisites are unusual enough that they don't even apply to the New York Times' own editorial board:

The Roma, sometimes called Gypsies, have been part of the European cultural landscape for centuries. They have also suffered greatly from discrimination and prejudice, particularly in times of economic crisis, when they become scapegoats.

That is happening now. Faced with stubbornly high unemployment and strained budgets, some European Union members are finding it easier to stigmatize and expel Roma than to provide them with the education, housing and employment they seek.

Exactly how much do Gypsies "seek" education? John Updike wrote in 2004:

Gypsies must be the only significant ethnic group in France that actively discourages literacy and encourages truancy. Compared with them, the embattled immigrants from the Muslim world are models of aspiration to bourgeois order and enlightenment.

But who cares about facts? The NYT editorializes onward:

In London, a Roma camp was dismantled over the summer and most of its residents sent back to Romania. In the Czech Republic, Roma children are still routinely segregated in schools. In Sweden, revelations that the police kept a secret registry of Roma families touched off a national storm.

You can just tell by looking at Swedes that they're all secret fascists, just like the English and the Czechs. (I mean, didn't the Czechs have something or other to do with the Nazis in 1938?)

The Roma’s impoverished living conditions and inability to get legitimate jobs reinforce stubborn stereotypes of a people forced to live on society’s margins.

In other words, the Roma have no agency. They aren't human, they are automatons who never choose anything about their lives and thus share no responsibility for their behavior. At least according to the Editorial Board.

France’s interior minister, Manuel Valls, has said the lifestyle of Roma from Romania and Bulgaria is so different that most cannot be integrated into French society and must be expelled.

His comments have been criticized by other officials, and Amnesty International has condemned France’s numerous deportations. On Thursday, there were protests in Paris over the deportation of a Roma girl, who was pulled off her school bus. But Mr. Valls’s tough stance has earned him high ratings among many French citizens.

Discrimination against the Roma is a direct violation of the E.U.’s Directive on Racial Equality and its official policy on Roma integration. Viviane Reding, the vice president of the European Commission and the E.U. justice commissioner, has severely upbraided France for violating E.U. rules protecting the free circulation of individuals. Her office warned that France faced E.U. sanctions over its treatment of the Roma. ...

With important municipal elections in France scheduled for next spring and the far-right National Front party on the rise, the actions of the Socialist government against the Roma look like political pandering. France’s president, François Hollande, needs to confront his interior minister, come out strongly in defense of the Roma’s fundamental rights and join other nations in helping them secure the education and jobs they need and deserve.

PARIS — THE cluster of Roma, handcuffed and caged-in behind glass walls, listened in silence as prosecutors accused them in court of selling child brides for up to about $270,000 in cash, valuing them based on their ability to steal. In a case that has riveted France, the prosecutors accused three family clans from Croatia of grooming girls and boys as young as 11 to steal as part of a gang that committed 100 robberies in France, Belgium and Germany in 2011.

One 20-year-old witness told the court he had stolen about $600,000 in cash and jewels for his parents, or more than $7,000 a month, since age 13. Less skilled thieves could face punishment, including beatings by Roma elders.

All but one of the 27 accused were convicted on Oct. 11 in Nancy, in eastern France, of forcing the children to steal, and received sentences from two to eight years. At the top of the network was a 66-year-old grandmother.

Black dots represent 50,000 Gypsies

The case highlighted an increasingly rancorous debate here and across Europe about what some politicians call, rather ominously, the “Roma question,” a reference to the nomadic people, also known as Gypsies, who came from India to Europe centuries ago. An estimated 11 million are scattered across Europe.

At a time of fiscal austerity, policy makers are raising a thorny question: after centuries of persecution and living on the fringes of society, can the Roma ever integrate into Western Europe?

This month’s trial only intensified that debate when members of the defense team offered an unusual legal defense: rather than focusing on the argument that the Roma are forced to resort to crime because of poverty and discrimination, it claimed that in some cases they were simply following age-old Roma traditions and generally operate outside the norms of society in “the style of the Middle Ages.” ...

Alternatively, they are an extreme example of where the world is slowly heading. Berkeley historian Yuri Slezkine argued that Gypsies are "Mercurians" who increasingly thrive because they don't bother with old-fashioned stuff like farming and soldiering. That may sound nuts, but consider how much Gypsies have prospered in the post-Cold War World. For example, like lowbrow versions of Marc Rich, many got in on stripping metal from Eastern European factories.

“It is very difficult to interpret their behavior based on our own 20th-century standards,” Alain Behr, a defense lawyer who represented two of the accused clan chiefs, explained by telephone from Nancy. “This community crosses time and space with its traditions, and we in Europe have trouble to integrate them. Yet they have preserved their tradition, which is one of survival.”

While not condoning the thievery, Mr. Behr said that what prosecutors had characterized as the practice of selling child brides was, in fact, part of a centuries-old tradition of Roma dowry.

But Gregory Weill, the prosecutor, dismissed cultural explanations. He noted that when investigators descended on the ringleaders’ hometown in Croatia, they discovered the family’s imposing marble houses. In the clan’s caravans in northern France, he said, police officers found Mercedeses, Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and Louis Vuitton purses.

Here are 20 photographs of rich Roma taken by Jesse Newman and published in the New York Times last April 4th.

... “Someone in the Middle Ages would not be able to launder money amassed by children,” he said. “They may have grown up in Eastern Europe. But they perfectly understood Western values. They were criminals."

It's not hard to come up with a Hegelian synthesis of the theses of the defense and prosecution: Gypsies have a culture of crime.

Livia Jaroka, a Hungarian anthropologist who has studied the Roma and is the only Roma member of the European Parliament, maintains that decades of discrimination have resulted in endemic unemployment, extreme poverty, low education levels, segregated housing, human trafficking, substance abuse and high mortality rates. She argues that assimilation into Western European culture does not require abandoning Roma traditions as much as overcoming age-old stereotypes and investing in education, jobs and health care.

“The cultural explanation for Roma criminality is nonsense,” she said in an interview. “It is about economics.”

But critics counter that rights come with responsibilities and that throwing money at the Roma is futile, unless they fully commit to integration.

One glimmer of hope is in Spain, which has some 750,000 Roma, nearly half under 25.

My vague impression is that Gypsies in Spain are more like blacks in America, a highly musical if troubled community, but not one in which parents routinely instruct their small children in crime. Why that is is vague. I've seen it attributed to General Franco promoting Gypsies as central to Spanish culture as part of his campaign to lure tourists, but I suspect there's much more to the story.

In general, it's difficult for countries to take serious steps to reform the predatory Gypsy culture under the prevailing climate of victimism.

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The "freedom for aggression" phrase comes from a blogger called J.S. Bolton.

59 comments:

J.S Bolton's post highlights a critical flaw in Karl Poppers thesis in his book "The Open Society and Its Enemies". That is, an Open Society can facilitate it's own enemies, and give them power, more than a non-open society.

Since Jews were a discriminated people who became so rich and powerful and since they love the Roama so much, why not integrate the two communities into one? By closely observing and living with Jews, the Roama are sure to become the new Einsteins and Zuckerbergs of the world. Build all the Roama communities right next to or inside Jewish ones.

After all, Jews will be so nice and helpful to them since Jews are so full of love and tolerance. I mean look how the Palestinians are thriving in Israel.

I read the Irish verison of the Roma called the Travelers. Usually both cultures were into making money by riping off which is probably why they have had poverty issues for centuries. If you ripe people off for a small amount of money you are not going to make it big.

One thing many people wish after join theEU in mine country,that you enlightened people from western world welcome gypsies. After hundred of years living among us, we still held them back. You can give then opportunities to succeed. Well, seems French, Britons, Germans are same racists as we :-).

Gypsies are filth. Of course if you're one of the anointed - that is to say someone hellbent on denying the empirical evidence - gypsies are just like you and me and can't wait to cleanup their act if only the haters would stop hatin' on 'em.

No, they are people who usually, but not always, make bad choices. Apparently in Spain, they have become somewhat integrated. If everyone had your attitude dismissing all hope for the Gypsies, integration will be less feasible.

I don't think it is the Times' job to do social engineering. Still, by publishing articles that give gypsies the benefit of the doubt, and ignoring the ugliness of Gypsy culture, they encourage us to remind Gypsies know they have agency.

Some Gypsies are young children -- it is odious to refer young children as filty.

I've encountered gypsies in Paris and (of all places) the Russian Far East. The ones in Paris were into selling trinkets and petty street scams, whereas the ones in Russia seem content to sit around and have their children do the begging for them.

"In general, it's difficult for countries to take serious steps to reform the predatory Gypsy culture under the prevailing climate of victimism."

Once upon a time, in the era of nationalism, we would've been content to give them their own country then let them proceed to ruin it. In the modern era, OTOH, once a people have ruined their own country they are entitled to invade other peoples' countries and proceed to ruin them, as well.

No country should be expected to take in an ethnic group whose chief cultural trait is parasitism and crime, whether that group is Somalis or the Roma.

That's sort of nasty but I know what you mean. Some of the most nastiest, most unpleasant, hostile, dishonest, and etc. people I've met were gyspies. They are like low IQ Jews with the pushiness and cunning but no redeeming facet.

Chechens can be trashy and crazy too, but they are a handsome and tough people with some sense of honor. And their weddings are cooler than gypsy ones.

But I'll say one thing for gypsies. They got more guts than white conservatives who are being fleeced by the global elites but do nothing but sing praises to Wall Street.

"In the modern era, OTOH, once a people have ruined their own country they are entitled to invade other peoples' countries and proceed to ruin them, as well."

Somalis didn't invade America. We invaded them to save them and then we invited them to settle all over America. Of course, not we as in you and me but as in the US government, the globalist elites, and sucker do-gooders.

The gypsies continue to exist in their current form because they follow the path of least resistance thanks of the absolute supremacy of political correctness over western society. That is the only real mystery.

I'm part Roma on my mother's side, and can say from firsthand experience that there's a certain chicken-and-egg thing going on, where the Roma have been subjected to centuries of horrific persecution, yet (in response) have developed an adaptive culture that's deeply dysfunctional, with all sorts of quasi-Indian taboos against anything that smacks of education or bettering oneself in the gadje world.

There is a small Roma intelligentsia that's developed in the past two generations, that simultaneously knows how to push all the Western guilt buttons for advancement while quietly despairing at their own peoples' self-destructive tendencies.

Seeing the Roma lounging or sleeping on their dirty mattresses (or sleeping bags), often placed on cardboard atop ventilation grates of underground stations in Paris, they never looked too miserable to me. Now if the Parisians could go just a bit further and throw the homeless and drunks out of the Metro stations, maybe the smell of urine down there would diminish over time...

However the squalor of the banlieues around Paris is probably here to stay.

I'm part Roma on my mother's side, and can say from firsthand experience that there's a certain chicken-and-egg thing going on, where the Roma have been subjected to centuries of horrific persecution, yet (in response) have developed an adaptive culture that's deeply dysfunctional, with all sorts of quasi-Indian taboos against anything that smacks of education or bettering oneself in the gadje world.

For decades, US and Western European journalists, human rights groups, and government officials have portrayed the Roma as wonderful, law-abiding, people held back by evil Slavs.

The solution, according to these doyennes of diversity, was Eastern European (EE) countries to stop enforcing laws that have a disparate impact on the Roma, slash the police force, create affirmative action programs, encourage Slavs to have fewer children so the Roma can become a majority, and “reform” the educational system to be more “welcoming” to the Roma. In practice, the latter policy required Slavic parents to send their children to the same schools as the Roma, tolerate their children being physically and sexually abused by their Roma classmates, and allow their children to be subjected to endless propaganda as to how the Roma (and Jews) are superior to Slavs and other Whites.

It is amusing to watch as the ever-so-PC Brits and French come unglued over the presence of relatively small numbers of Roma on their soil. The French, for example, have periodically rounded them up, placed them on trains, and forcibly deported them to EE. Britain is so upset over them (and a few Muslim clerics) that it is considering abrogating several human rights agreements and withdrawing from the European Court for Human Rights. Perhaps they need a human rights “intervention” similar to the one they they inflicted on the people of Serbia and Republiska Serbska.

The influx of Roma will likely accelerate as EE countries provide them with monetary and other incentives (e.g., the dismissal of criminal charges) if they migrate to Western Europe (WE). Russia is using a similar strategy to encourage Chechens and Dagestanis to relocate to the US and WE; the FSB, through front groups, will even create documents corroborating whatever claims of oppression the Chechens and Dagestanis might want to allege in their asylum application. WE, especially the UK, as well as the US, will likely become a repository of every “oppressed” group that EE wants to get rid of.

The New York Times recently ran an article criticizing Russia for ignoring child marriages among Gypsies (Roma) living in rural Russia. When the former Soviet Union tried to keep the Roma from marrying off their 14 years old daughters, they were attacked by American government and human rights groups for interfering with gypsy culture.

Liberalism is a weapon: it allows British, Anglo-American, and Jewish elites to take the high ground on every issue, i.e., it allows them to vilify other groups for doing something and for not doing something, for allowing an activity and for stopping an activity. In short, the Anglo-Israel-American elites are, with liberalism, always right, and everyone else is always wrong. They are like abusive wife who convinces their husband they are stupid by criticizing literally everything they do.

If memory serves, traditional Romani subgroups in Western Europe like the Kale and the Romanchal are far more admixed with the population they live among, which probably lessens the impact of their population. They were also persecuted to a far greater extent by civil authorities and angry mobs, likely removing the worst offenders from the population, and forcing the rest of them into far less socially disruptive scams and jobs that work well in a mobile lifestyle like musicians and actors (Charlie Chaplin was part Romanchal).

In Eastern Europe, it seems the Roma had a far larger initial population base, and when the Ottomans took over, used the legal loopholes of the millet system for all it was worth, converting and deconverting as it best suited their purposes.

Valls is toast. The strategy of voting Dem (or Socialist, same thing) gets you completely Open Borders. Socialists will not tolerate Valls actions, and will throw open the doors to Roma, and really all of the Third World. They don't fear the National Front because they can always outlaw them and arrest all the leaders and members.

The "nice things" that wealthy people want are incompatible with what they believe -- see NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio who will turn NYC into Detroit within a few years. With the rabid approval of those wealthy elites. They wanted, seriously, the NYC of Taxi Driver. And now they'll get it.

It is absolute dogma for the Left to believe in Open Borders, the Wickedness of Western Europeans, the innate magical goodness of the Third World (and Gypsies), and also the innate wickedness of Jews and Israelis as the ultimate White people who did not get completely wiped out. [Had they all be eradicated they'd be lionized in memory of course.] This is a deep, post-Christian belief with the form of the Scandinavian view of extreme social cohesion in any idiot belief particularly themselves as a tiny spark of light in wicked darkness.

This is why Valls is toast. Hollande will have no choice but to dismiss him (Hollande is weak internally as well as externally) and throw open France's borders. Because Socialism if it stands for anything it stands for moral preening by rich people.

If memory serves, traditional Romani subgroups in Western Europe like the Kale and the Romanchal are far more admixed with the population they live among, which probably lessens the impact of their population.

I think thats true over here in the UK. Gypsies here dont much resemble the E. European Roma. I suppose they did at one time.

My theory is that being on an island here they've been cut off from other Roma populations.

"According to the website of Fundación Secretariado Gitano ("Gitano Secretariat Foundation"), in the Spanish prison system the Spanish Romani women respresent the 25% of the incarcerated feminine population, while Spanish Romani people represent the 1.4% of the total Spanish population. 64% of the detentions of gitano people are drug trafficking-related. 93.2% of women inmates for drug trafficking are gitanas. 13.2% of the total drug trafficking-related inmates are of gitano ethnicity.[6]"

"With important municipal elections in France scheduled for next spring and the far-right National Front party on the rise, the actions of the Socialist government against the Roma look like political pandering."

Given that Sarkozy's UMP, Hollande's PS, and, of course, the National Front all have taken a hard line on the Roma, one gets the distinct impression that the NYT defines "pandering" here as supporting the right of the French people to determine who may reside in France.

The bullshit starts from the very first sentence. In the English language, at least they have *always* been known as 'Gypsies', right from the time they first set foot in England in the 15th century. In fact they have never ever been called anything else in all those centuries. It was their 'official designation' ie written into laws and government papers as well as the standard English term. And what's more it was never ever seen as derogatoy not least by Gypsies themselves. Strangely enough the term is based on an error. 'Gypsy' is slang for Egyptian. Because they were just about the only dark skinned strangers in England at that time, people thought that they hailed from Egypt, as Egyptians were just about the only dark people 15th century Englishmen knew about.

As it happens 'Roma' is a term invented by lefties in order to be PC. Gypsises are, of course, Indian in origin. The Dom or 'Rom' are a low caste group of dead animal dealers, corpse burners well known for thievery, (only low castes handle death in India). The lefties in their lefty way try to do an Orwell wih language by repeating it often enough - and they are winning.

Living in London, England, i'e been treated to the sight of various ingenious Gypsy, (from Romania),beggars doing their little spiels in the local High Street. The 'benefits' of EU membersip include watching grotesque mdieval style little 'cripple show' in which a man with an obvious deformed leg ostenatious walks up and down the street in search of alms. My local High Street has now got about 5 of these 'artistes' working pitches simulatneously now. Back in the supposed dark days of the 1970s I never, ever saw a single beggar in my neck-of-the-woods.

America is not an "open society" rather the peak of high trust culture and self government, a process that began in 3d century Germania and was bequeathed hence to Europe and to the greatest extent America through England.

The Germanic warriors revitalized the Roman Empire and were the bulwark of Western civilization against the East from the 3d century to the present day. The Germanic warriors could earn status not by mere birth but dint of the sword, later this extended to the trade guilds mark of trust. We are also beneficiaries of Roman and Catholic laws against cousin marriage, forcing outbreeding and the trusting of those outside the clan or family.

The Saxon culture of property and yeomanry - the armed militia of the modern day - and Saxon common laws literally wed to the Norman wielding of the sword and the law the conflict in England between the throne and the nobility gave the world Magna Carta. Common Law and the respective interests of the throne vs the Barons gave us Parliaments of Men, for the rights of the nobles extended through practice and time to the commoners. The interests of the throne and the Charter made the commoners seek protection from the nobility and common cause with the King. The English Church [also pursuing it's interests] enforced the Charter by excommunication.

Liberty was a privilege of nobility.

America made all male citizens noble.

America is the Peak of Trust Culture. Hence it operates from implicit trust and implicit law abiding, implicit self control, implicit understanding of this custom.

So America isn't a Open Society, it's a High Trust Society with an enormous dowry and inheritance for its posterity.

@Bisounours: With a surname like Radu, the decedent in that photo is a Romanian Gypsy, who just happened to be plying his tragicomic trade in Spain. Actual Spanish Gypsies do tend to fit in a bit better than in most other countries, in my experience.

A series of 1990s murders in San Francisco inspired the true-crime account Hastened to the Grave, by Jack Olsen. Seems that these particular gypsies aren't very keen on emptying firearms into their victims or whomping them with crowbars etc. Administering poison is more their style. The gypsy family cited here was also discussed at book length, much earlier, by Peter Maas of Valachi Papers fame.

Sure!I think Spain may have come to a kind of arrangement with its own Gypsies but are now being hit by waves of Romanian Gypsies. This BBC documentary covers the problem there, in Italy and back in Romania itself:Gypsy Child Thieves (BBC Documentary)

By the way I like your name. (For Sailer readers not hip to the French scene, a "Bisounours" is the French translation of "Care Bear" and it's used to describe the politically correct believers in magical thinking and Not Noticing Things: http://www.fdesouche.com/21575-bisounours-dor-au-maire-de-beausoleil)

As horrible as the Gypsies are, I do respect them. There's a sort of mad integrity in those people. "This is who we are, this is what we're going to do, and we don't care if you don't like it and we will never change for you." Unlike modern "American" and "European" culture, there's some degree of honesty to the whole thing.

anon:" Britain is so upset over them (and a few Muslim clerics) that it is considering abrogating several human rights agreements and withdrawing from the European Court for Human Rights. Perhaps they need a human rights “intervention” similar to the one they they inflicted on the people of Serbia and Republiska Serbska."

Yeah, we deserve it.OTOH, we also have nukes.

The Roma influx has already caused changes here, such as making the forcible occupation of residential property a criminal offence. Until recently, if you broke into someone's house to steal then ran away you could go to jail, but if you broke in and occupied the property you had not committed an offence! At any rate the police would not prosecute for breaking & entering, criminal damage etc.

"They have also suffered greatly from discrimination and prejudice, ..............................."

Translated: They have also suffered greatly from people having made accurate assessments of their character.

One of those hard but true facts that one may eventually learn with age and experience is this: The fact that an injustice was done against a man, does not make him a good man. The fact that a people have been persecuted does not make them a good people.

Why does Whitey always like to blame minorities displaying behaviors that white societies are responsible for creating? And this blame game has been going on a lot longer than the type of rhetoric emerging from the racial panic in Europe.

This is Europe's problemm for not integrating them trough intermarriage - they've had 700 years. They are in effect Euro-untouchables, or Euro-Dalits, and an indication, along with the gassed Jews, of just how intolerant Abrahamic societies have been historically.

My guess is that had Paganism remained regnant in Europe, there would ave been no gypsies today.

The anti-Jewish unhinged are out in force today. There were less Jews in Europe in 1939 than Roma in Europe today. So they are just like the Jews but lower IQ?Except the Jews of Europe were hard working, creative, law abiding, and wealth creating. Yeah - just like the Roma - except for that little bitty IQ difference. And why exactly does anyone think Jews should be any more full of love and tolerance than Gentiles. They aren't and never claimed to be. But they are no less either. Europe is committing suicide, for their own reasons, and it has nothing to do with the Jews or their love and tolerance.

In the UK, quite separately from the pick-alcoholics-off-the-street slavery practiced by some Irish traveller clans, there's people-trafficking for the purposes either of prostitution or benefit fraud. Benefit fraud seems to be a sideline with slave adults (you have your slaves and take their benefits as well as making them work for you), with trafficked children the benefits seem to be the main attraction. Hence the not too bright lady who claimed to have had 6 children in 12 months - even the Greeks were suspicious of that.

We've now got the Muslim/Roma intersection - a Pakistani national about to be deported from the UK, who paid for a European bride - a Roma woman kidnapped in Slovakia and prostituted in the Czech Republic before being sold on.

"drug dealing is a higher level sort of crime than typical gypsy scams"

Not in the UK. There's a fair amount being dealt and used, more by established UK gypsy clans than by Roma (certainly not seen press reports of Roma dealing). Dealing, as bike gangs know, is always a good way to make money if the police are wary of bothering you.

Travellers are a protected species under current UK law. For example, you cannot object to a planned traveller site on the (perfectly rational) grounds that it might increase crime in your area. That objection will be dismissed as racist - and you might get a police visit too. Anarcho-tyranny.

"the Irish version of the Roma called the Travelers... why they have had poverty issues for centuries."

Irish travellers are not poor as the Roma are. They drive top of the range four-wheel drive vehicles, have huge and expensive caravans, pay cash for land which they occupy. A fair old number of them do however prey on the settled population.

"members of the defense team offered an unusual legal defense: rather than focusing on the argument that the Roma are forced to resort to crime because of poverty and discrimination, it claimed that in some cases they were simply following age-old Roma traditions and generally operate outside the norms of society in “the style of the Middle Ages.”"

Or as the Guardian put it three years ago "Rolling caravans do not lend themselves to rooted integration, and especially when they are decoupled from standard western ideas about property rights."

Matthew said:This is interesting: "Leftists want chic Paris district to host Roma camp." The kind of thing that might get the rich to turn against mass immigration.

It would, if it were done systematically, and if it were done at all (the rich know very well how to stop things they don't want in THEIR neighborhoods). But there's a trick: the rich vote overwhelmingly for Sarkozy already, and Hollande would in fact prefer them to vote for Le Pen, because it would actually help the left win elections, since it is well-known that most conservatives will never vote for the far right.

From Hollande's point of view, it is much better to have a country which is 50% socialist (according to opinion polls, 90% plus of minorities vote for the left, and the Paris region is about 40% minority already), and the rest equally divided between conservatives and nationalists/populists. Paradoxically, the more the native French are angry and resentful because of immigration, the easier it is for the left to win elections.

Incidentally, both Hollande and Sarkozy are immigrationists, although Sarkozy fooled the French in 2007 when he pretended to be tough on immigration. He actually opened the borders even more than the previous socialist administration.

We used to have a country which was 50% left-wing and 50% conservative, with many swing voters who made every election iffy, and it was a nightmare for mainstream politicians. Now, in a generation or two, we'll have an islamist / secularist divide, but politicians hardly ever bother to think beyond the next election.

The 2006 census in the Republic of Ireland reported the number of Irish Travellers as 22,369.[13] A further 1,700 to 2,000 were estimated to live in Northern Ireland.[14]From the 2006 Irish census it was determined that 20,975 dwell in urban areas and 1,460 were living in rural areas. With an overall population of just 0.5% some areas were found to have a higher proportion, with Tuam, Galway Travellers constituting 7.71% of the population. There were found to be 9,301 Travellers in the 0–14 age range, comprising 41.5% of the Traveller population, and a further 3,406 of them were in the 15–24 age range, comprising 15.2%. Children of age range 0–17 comprised 48.7% of the Traveller population.Following the findings of the All Ireland Traveller Health Study (estimates for 2008), the figure for Northern Ireland was revised to 3,905 and that for the Republic to 36,224.[15]

any Travellers are breeders of dogs such as greyhounds or lurchers and have a long-standing interest in horse trading. The main fairs associated with them are held annually at Ballinasloe (Co. Galway), Puck Fair (Co. Kerry), Ballabuidhe Horse Fair (Co. Cork), the monthly Smithfield Horse Fair (inner Dublin) and Appleby (England). They are often involved in dealing scrap metals, e.g., 60% of the raw material for Irish steel is sourced from scrap metal, approximately 50% (75,000 metric tonnes) segregated by the community at a value of more than £1.5 million. Such percentages for more valuable non-ferrous metals may be significantly greater.[41]Since the majority of Irish Travellers' employment is either self-employment or wage labour, income and financial status varies greatly from family to family. Many families choose not to reveal the specifics of their finances, but when explained it is very difficult to detect any sort of pattern or regular trend of monthly or weekly income. To detect their financial status many look to the state of the possessions: their trailer, motor vehicle, domestic utensils, and any other valuables.[9][page needed]Social identity

I once walked over a "crippled" Gypsy (a man in his thirties) on my way into a church in France. Coming out around thirty minutes later, I was amused to see him walking nonchalantly up and down the street, wholly unembarrassed and smoking a cigarette.

maybe the thing about Spain is the Spanish aren't much better. I mean they cheat retarded basketball players out of a trophy. I mean even gypsies wouldn't sink that low.

So, it's not so much that gypsies integrated up but Spanish integrated down.

Maybe, but the same argument should also have applied in southeastern Europe. The non-gypsy populations there are hardly models of Nordic probity. Whether in Western Europe, North America, or Australia, people from the Balkans--and I don't mean gypsies masquerading as Serbs or whatever--have a well-deserved reputation for dodgy behavior in their dealings with people outside their own communities.

And yet, gypsies in Romania, etc., have not integrated at all. Why would things be any different in Spain?

On the other hand, the general tendency to cheat people outside your own clan that prevails in much of the non-northern-European world probably hasn't helped improve gypsy morality, either.

And yet, gypsies in Romania, etc., have not integrated at all. Why would things be any different in Spain?

True. To say that gypsies are well integrated in Spain is not to be well informed about historical relations between iberian populations and gitanos. Only to start, there were already several attempts to resolve the "gypsy problem" in the past, beign the most important attempt what historically was called "The Great Roundup of Gitanos", in 1749, where Spanish monarchy ordered a nationwide raid that led to separation ofp families and placement of all able-bodied men into forced labor camps.

Beign true that in southern Spain gypsies are more or less integrated in local culture (in the north of the country their presence is much more diffuse), in general the opinion of people is negative, very negative, about their customs and lifestyle (needles to say that if spanish gypsies are bad, eastern european gypsies are infinitely worse, and these are flooding our streets in last years). However I don´t agree that spaniards are "equal" in lack of honesty than gypsies, as some commenter said here: the bad influence comes from them to (some of) us and not viceversa. Having said that, Gypsy influence in some aspects of our culture, specially in southern Spain popular culture is, unfortunately, real and since they settled here, only bad things have brought with their bad contribution.

On other hand, gypsies will be always gypsies, not matter where they settle or live.

" Russia is using a similar strategy to encourage Chechens and Dagestanis to relocate to the US and WE; the FSB, through front groups, will even create documents corroborating whatever claims of oppression the Chechens and Dagestanis might want to allege in their asylum application."

Seems like a brilliant strategy. Do you have a link corroborating this?

How fair is it to accuse Gypsies of having "a culture of crime?" Are there any among them doing honest labor? How do they compare to American blacks? Based on all I read, they are far worse, which is pretty damn bad, if true.

That seems to raise the issue the radical Left would be most concerned about: that once you acknowledge that virtually an entire people can be rotten for cultural and even genetic reasons, you turn on a light in peoples' minds - maybe it isn't just Gypsies. And for the Left, that's dangerous.

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